A view of lunch at TEDxMet, inside the Temple of Dendur. Photo: Nadia Goodman

The weekend before last, we joined hundreds of New Yorkers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first-ever TEDx event at a museum: TEDxMet. The speakers included Nobel-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, artist Maira Kalman, legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones, and writer Andrew Solomon. The day was peppered with stunning music and dance performances, and thoughtful quotes that stayed with us long after it ended. (A stunner from Andrew Solomon: “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.”)

For lunch, we packed into the Temple of Dendur to eat chicken salad sandwiches among the stately ruins of ancient Egyptian temples. (If you’ve never been to the Met, you might know the Temple of Dendur from this memorable scene in When Harry Met Sally.) Not exactly an ordinary Saturday afternoon.

This is the kind of unique experience that many people have at TEDx events, which take place all over the world. Each week, we cover great TEDx talks, stories, and events on the TEDx blog. Below, some recent highlights.

Inspiring the next generation of female engineers: Debbie Sterling at TEDxPSUClose your eyes and picture an engineer. Chances are, you didn’t picture a woman. Debbie Sterling, a mechanical engineer and founder of GoldieBlox, wants to change that. In this inspiring talk, she explains how she’s preparing young girls to become tomorrow’s engineers.

Violence against women–it’s a men’s issue: Jackson Katz at TEDxFiDiWomenWomen lead the effort to prevent domestic violence, but according to Jackson Katz, it’s time for men to step up. Jackson is a tough-looking former football player, women’s studies major, and proud feminist who says that reducing violence everywhere starts with teaching men to practice peaceful leadership.

The secret of the bat genome: Emma TeelingWhat can bats tell us about how to cure deafness or human diseases? In this fascinating talk at TEDxDublin, Emma Teeling, director of the Centre for Irish Bat Research, explains how the bat genome may offer a key to exciting medical advances.

In today’s moving TED Talk, Jake Barton of the design firm Local Projects shares the idea at the core of the yet-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum: that museum-goers need to be included in the telling of the story. “The event is so recent, somewhere between history and current events,” says Barton, explaining that more […]

In the early ‘80s, before MTV turned its attention to reality TV, David Bowie, Madonna and the Pretenders lit up small screens, using a new medium to showcase their songs: the music video. Recently, we’ve seen a resurgence of this art form as cinematographers, musicians and artists join together to supersize their visual creativity. But […]